Spencer Heath Archive

Item 946

Penciling in Stenographic notebook 944

The numerical relationships indicated by the foregoing example have been given a general formulation on page _____. Here the total work or energy flow, W, per generation is derived from ND, the number of persons and the duration of their activities and lives. The energy available for outflow upon the environment is found by deducting from the total life-years, the number of life-years of energy that are required, for the mass-integration of the structure of each individual or generation. The remaining energy is that potentially available for the positive functioning of the social organism. Thus for any population its coefficient E of social potentiality or possible sociological efficiency is to be found by dividing its total life-years into those that remain available after deduction of the life-years required for its biological maturation; in other words, the total life-years into the mature life-years. In the case of the million population of twenty-five years average span, twenty-millions of life-years must be deducted, leaving only five millions to be divided by the total of twenty-five millions. This gives it a coefficient of only .2. The half-million with a 50-year span we must deduct only ten millions, leaving fifteen millions available. This divided by the same total of twenty-five yields a coefficient of .6 for the same number of life years more durably organized or transformed. A population can maintain or advance itself only by virtue of its available adult energy. The extent to which it social­izes this energy into reciprocal services is the measure of its exemption from conflicts and wars. The optimum conditions for this is that in which, for a given number of life-years, D is maximum and N is therefore minimum.

     The optimum condition is that in which the available or adult energy is maximum, in which for a given amount of life the mass element tends towards zero while the durational factor approaches the infinite. Speculative minds will note here an almost uncanny parallel to the religious doctrine of immortality taking … /man taking on immortality?/